the legitimising strategies of the nazi administration in northern italy_ propaganda in the adria

The Legitimising Strategies of the Nazi Administration in Northern Italy: Propaganda in theAdriatisches KüstenlandAuthor(s): Gianmarco BresadolaSource: Contemporary European History, Vol. 13, No. 4, Theme Issue: Political Legitimacy inMid-Twentieth Century Europe (Nov., 2004), pp. 425-451Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20081231Accessed: 31/03/2010 22:33

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The Legitimising Strategies of

the Nazi Administration in

Northern Italy: Propaganda in

the Adriatisches K?stenland

GIANMARCO BRESADOLA

From September 1943 to 25 April 1945 all of Italy not occupied by the Allied

forces was either controlled by the Fascist government of the Italian Social Republic

(Reppublica Sociale Italiana, RSI) or was under German martial law under the

leadership of Friedrich Walter Landfried, Reich Secretary of State for the Economy.1 However, the two northernmost areas of Italy, contiguous operations

zones known

as Alpenvorland and Adriatisches K?stenland, were set apart from this regime and

governed by Nazi civil administrators.

In what follows I shall first summarise the modus operandi of the Nazi military

occupation in Italy, the status of the RSI and the general characteristics of the

civil administration in the two operations zones. I shall then examine the legitimising

strategies employed by the Nazis in the Adriatisches K?stenland and the way in which

these were translated into propaganda, with particular attention to the German

language newspaper Deutsche Adria Zeitung, which gives a particularly clear idea of

the Reich's plans for the future of the region.

Italy after the armistice: the German military administration, the Social

Republic and the operations zone

From the early months of 1943, as the Fascist regime began to totter, the Nazi

generals were already considering a possible military occupation of their Italian ally

Translated by Rosemary Williams.

The structure of the German military administration in Italy was similar to that previously set up in other wehrmacht-occupied European countries. There was a political leader (Reich Plenipotentiary

Rudolf Rahn), a military leader (General Plenipotentiary Rudolf Toussaint) and a chief of police and

SS chief (SS Obergruppenf?hrer and police leader Karl Wolff). After the attempt on Hitler's life on

20 July 1944 General Toussaint was demoted and his powers transferred to SS-Obergriippenfiihrer Wolff,

considerably extending his authority. Landfried was also replaced, by SS Gruppenf?hrer Otto W?chter.

The most important studies of the Nazi military occupation of Italy are E. Collotti, L'occupazione tedesca

dellTtalia occupata (1943?1943). Studio e documenti (Milan: Lerici, 1963), and L. Klinkhammer, L'occupazione tedesca in Italia (1943-1945) (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1993).

Contemporary European History, 13, 4 (2004), pp. 425-451 ? 2004 Cambridge University Press

DOI: 10.1017/S0960777304001882 Printed in the United Kingdom

426 Contemporary European History

if its government decided to pull out of the war. The Germans were not caught unawares

by the 8 September armistice: they were

ready with operation 'Alaric', as

they called the occupation plan that had been drawn up in spring and summer 1943,

and very soon seized control of most of the country. The aims of the occupation were

primarily strategic and military, and secondarily propagandist: Italy was to serve as a

warning to other allies of Germany who felt inclined to withdraw from the conflict.

Moreover, the Germans saw central and northern Italy as a reservoir of manpower

for the factories of the Reich, and a source of industrial and agricultural products for the German war economy. The very fact that an economist, in the person of

Landfried, was chosen to head the administration reveals the Nazi's preoccupation

with exploiting the human, material and logistic resources of Italy.2 Whereas the Nazi generals favoured a policy of occupation pure and simple and

opposed the restoration of any Italian Fascist authority, others ? backed by the

Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop - advocated the creation of a nominally

independent state which would perpetuate ? in however limited a way

? the alliance

with the Reich and relieve the Wehrmacht of the tasks of internal policing and

territorial organisation. The second alternative won out, leading to the constitution of

the Italian Social Republic in Wehrmacht-controlled Italy.3 It formed a government on 23 September 1943, headed by Benito Mussolini.4 The Duce, and most of his

political and military elite, envisaged the RSI as a bastion to preserve the pure and

uncorrupted soul of Fascism, free at last from the curbs imposed during their twenty

years of power by the forces of conservatism, the monarchy and the Church.

When it came to the practicalities of setting up and governing the new state,

however, the Italian Fascists were baulked by the intransigence of the German

authorities, which were determined to confine the RSI within the narrow limits

of Nazi war aims. Symptomatic of the very different German and Italian views of the

new Republic

was the question of the Italian regular army. Marshal Graziani, Minister

of Defence and Commander in Chief, had to grapple not only with the very limited

success of call-ups and recruitment campaigns,5 but also, and more importantly, with

opposition from most of the German political and military leaders who were deeply and openly sceptical as to Italians' stomach for the fight, and would have preferred to see RSI manpower put to work for the Reich rather than sent to the battlefield.

2 The final say on the objectives and political orientation of the military occupation was the prerogative

of the agents of Albert Speer, Reich minister of armaments and war production, and the gauleiter Fritz

Sauckel, Reich plenipotentiary for the employment of labour.

The Italian Social Republic is also known as the 'Repubblica di Salo', after the town on Lake Garda

which became the seat of government. 4

After the coup d'?tat on 25 July 1943 Mussolini was arrested and imprisoned in the mountainous

region of the Gran Sasso. On 12 September he was rescued by German parachutists and taken to Italy,

where he met Hitler a few days later to agree the outlines of a future Fascist Italian state. See F. W. Deakin,

The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini, Hitler and the Fall of Italian Fascism (London: Phoenix, 2000 [1962]). 5

For his recruitment pool Graziani looked substantially to the annual call-up (announced on 9 October

1943) and to Italian soldiers interned in German camps. With considerable difficulty he succeeded in

forming four divisions - San Marco, Monterosa, Italia and Littorio

- which were trained in Germany but

played only a very small part in military operations against the Allies; they were used mostly to combat

partisan guerrillas.

Nazi Propaganda in the Adriatisches K?stenland 427

On the economic side, again, the Germans allowed the RSI only the smallest

margin of autonomy; Italian production was more or less controlled and managed

by the Nazis. It was on the social side that Mussolini tried hardest to seize the

initiative, with the main aim of regaining the support of the workers, who had become

increasingly hostile to both the Republic and the Nazi occupation. But the Duce's

ambitious programme of'socialisation'6 ended in failure: it was strongly opposed by

employers and by the Germans, who feared that it might reduce productivity, and

the workers did not give it the warm welcome which Mussolini and his henchmen

had anticipated.

Although the sovereignty of the RSI was acutely constrained and it was effectively unable to make its own decisions, it was more than a mere Nazi 'puppet state'.7 What

it did was to supply Nazi-occupied Italy with an Italian government, administration

and army which pursued, and strove to perfect, a totalitarian project in sympathy with the aims of Nazi Germany

? aims in which the Fascists actively participated, for

example as

regards the persecution of the Jews.

Neither the RSI nor the German military occupation was extended to the two

Italian regions bordering on the Reich, where Hitler was determined to set up a

civil administration. It was no novelty for the Nazis to set up a civil administration

in occupied territories: 'German civil administrations had been set up in other parts of Europe, particularly in territories which were formally or actually annexed to

the Reich (e.g. Alsace-Lorraine or Luxembourg),

or where such administration was

considered as an interim measure pending

a future annexation.'8

The first operations zone, the Alpenvorland (Foothills of the Alps), was officially set up on 18 September 1943 and included the provinces of Bolzano, Trento and

Belluno. The civil administration was headed by the Tyrolese gauleiter Franz Hofer, who took the title of high commissioner. He enjoyed the widest judicial, legislative

and executive powers and was directly responsible to the F?hrer.9

After a few weeks, during which German military units crushed partisan units that

had sprung into renewed life after the disbanding of the Italian army units stationed in

the eastern regions, a second zone of operations, the Adriatisches K?stenland (Adriatic

Coast), was set up on 1 October. It included the provinces of Udine, Trieste, Gorizia,

Pola, Fiume and Ljubljana. Its high commissioner was the influential gauleiter of

6 This involved making workers responsible for managing their own factories.

7 The RSI was for a long time neglected by historians. Apart from the works mentioned above ?

Deakin's pioneering study, and the works by Collotti and Klinkhammer, in which both focus on the

structure of the German occupation and the relationship between the Nazis and the government in Salo -

other studies are L. Ganapini, La Repubblica delle camicie nere. I combattenti, i politici, gli amministratori, i

socializzatori (Milan: Garzanti, 1999); R. De Felice, Mussolini I'alleato. 1940-1945, II: La guerra civile (1943

1945) (Turin: Einaudi, 1997); P. P. Poggio (ed.), La Repubblica sociale italiana, Annali della Fondazione

Micheletti 2 (Brescia, 1986); G. Bocea, La repubblica di Mussolini (Bari and Rome: Laterza, 1977). 8

E. Collotti, 'L'occupazione tedesca in Italia', in E. Collotti, R. Sandri and F. Sessi, eds., Dizionario

della Resistenza. Storia e geografia della Liberazione (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), 47. 9

The Alpenvorland zone has been little studied. See, e.g., R. De Felice, // problema dell'Alto Adige nei rapporti italo-tedeschi dall'Anschluss alla fine della seconda guerra mondiale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1973);

K. Stuhlpfarrer, Le Zone d'Operazione Prealpi e Litorale Adri?tico, 1943-1945 (Gorizia: Libreria Adami,

1979); various authors, Tedeschi, partigiani, popolazioni nell'Alpenvorland (Venice: Marsilio, 1984).


Carinthia, Friedrich Rainer; like Hofer, he had well-nigh absolute power over the

political, social, juridical and financial life of his province and was directly answerable

to Hitler.

Each zone was governed by a civil service led by a gauleiter; the Italian Social

Republic had no authority. Officially, the administration of the Alpenvorland and

the Adriatisches K?stenland was geared to military needs - the Germans had set up

operations zones in other parts of Italy where fighting

was in progress ?

and it was, in

theory, temporary In reality the Germans, ignoring repeated, albeit timorous, protests

from a Mussolini now powerless to influence his Nazi allies, had incorporated the two

zones into the Reich, and everything went to show that if the Axis powers won the

war, all or parts of them would be permanently removed from Italian sovereignty.11

The prospect of permanently incorporating the two zones into the Reich required the Nazi administration to make far greater legitimising efforts than was usual in zones

of temporary occupation, where the main aim was to minimise hostility on the part

of the inhabitants. The civil administrations run by Rainer and Hofer not only had

to win over the population in the short term ?

that is, until the end of the war ? but

to persuade them that their best option for the future (the best way to conserve their

cultural traditions, maintain their ethnic and national identity and promote their

economic and social wellbeing) was permanent inclusion in the territories of the

Reich. Both administrations found themselves in the typical position of the occupying

power in a state (or colony or protectorate) which has to constitute its own legitimacy

largely or entirely on a basis of hegemony12 Although the intention to annex these

regions was never openly declared, the legitimacy of their administrations depended

closely on that of the National Socialist state, which, clothed in the majesty of an

'imperial hegemonic authority', stood as guarantor of their security and economic

development.

The difficulty of creating this legitimacy was considerably greater for the

administration of the Adriatisches K?stenland than for that of the Alpenvorland. In the latter, the presence (especially in the province of Bolzano) of a large German

speaking element with strong anti-Italian and pro-Austrian sentiments encouraged

the gauleiter, Hofer, to introduce a tough policy of racial discrimination. He reversed

the policy of the Fascists, who had tried to Italianise the Alto Adige and Trentino

10 Rainer, an enthusiastic and militant Nazi, was appointed to the prestigious post of gauleiter of

Salzburg after the Anschluss. In 1942 his considerable political acumen and contacts with Nazi leaders

secured him the position of gauleiter and Reichskommissar for Carinthia, a province bordering on the

Reich. In this position his chief concern was to Germanise the area, which meant destroying the culture,

politics and indeed the persons of the Slovene-speaking population. See M. Williams, 'Friedrich Rainer

e Odilo Globocnik. L'amicizia ins?lita e i ruoli sinistri di due nazisti tipici', Qualestoria 1 (June 1997). 11

The final incorporation of the province of Bolzano, or Alto Adige, into the Reich seems to have

been taken for granted because of the very large German-speaking population there; the fate of the

provinces of Trento and Belluno seems to have been less assured. It seemed equally certain that Italy would lose Friuli and Venezia Giulia, both of strategic value to the Reich, which had no other outlet to

the Mediterranean and was eager to increase its presence in the Balkans. On the other hand, racial and

ethnic considerations would have hampered the absorption of the Adriatic coastal zone into the Reich. 12 N. Bobbio, N. Matteuccia and G. Pasquino, Dizionario di pol?tica (Turin: UTET, 1990), 556.


by expelling or marginalising the German speakers, and instead favoured the latter,

flooding the civil service with ethnic Germans and encouraging their folklore and

traditions, stimulating links with the Austrian Tyrol.13 On the other hand, he sealed off

the territory of the zone from the authority of the Social Republic (the Republican Fascist Party was not permitted to operate in the Alpenvorland) and marginalised the ethnic Italians, who, though in the majority, were relegated to a subordinate

position. Thus he created a loyal following based on ethnic and nationalist criteria,

which meant that in the short term the German administration could count on a

secure (because politically homogeneous) consensus of approval for its policies. In

the longer term this would surely have ended in the region - or at least the province

of Bolzano - being incorporated into Austria and so into the Reich.

Because the population of the Adriatisches K?stenland was not substantially

German-speaking ?

the German-speaking communities, none of them very large,

were confined to some parts of Friuli and the province of Ljubljana - the high

commissioner, Rainer, could not follow the same sort of legitimising strategy as his

colleague Hofer. Rather he exploited the peculiar ethno-social composition of the

region and the numerous errors in local Fascist policies in his -

to a considerable extent

successful -

attempt to create a widespread

consensus in favour of his administration.

To understand the thinking behind Rainers legitimising strategies, therefore, we

must look at the whole ethno-social structure of the zone and recall its history from

the advent of the Fascist regime to its fall in July 1943.

Ethnic composition, socioeconomic structures and Fascist government

in the eastern provinces

With the exception of Udine, all the provinces in the operations zones had been

incorporated into the kingdom of Italy after the First World War. Trieste,14 Gorizia

and Pola went to Italy just after the cessation of hostilities, Fiume in 1924 under the

Rome Treaty between Italy and Yugoslavia. Ljubljana became part of Italy in May

1941 when Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis armies. Although the province of

Udine was predominantly Italian and that of Ljubljana almost entirely Slovene,15 in

the other territories of the region a variety of ethnic groups was living side by side:

a census in 1939 showed that almost 40 per cent of the inhabitants of Venezia Giulia

were non-Italian speakers (about 25 per cent were Slovene, and just over 13 per cent

Croatian).

This striking ethnic complexity was matched by a very wide range of differing social structures, both among and within the ethnic groups. Most of the Slovenes

13 In order to increase the ethnic German element in this zone of operations the Germans admitted

to it those inhabitants of the province of Bolzano who, after the agreement between the Reich and Italy

(the alternatives offered in October 1939) had chosen to leave Italy for Germany or Austria. 14

Although Trieste was not included until 1921, after a period of extraordinary administration. 15

According to the 31 July 1941 census the population of Ljubljana consisted of 339,751 Slovene

speakers (93.8 per cent of the total), 13,580 Germans, 5,053 Croatians, 511 Serbs, 458 Italians and 1,376 other nationalities: see M. Pahor, 'La provincia di Lubiana', in Collotti et al, Dizionario della Resistenza,

607.


were peasants or livestock farmers. Ljubljana was the poorest province in Slovenia,

and its economy depended on agriculture and timber (40 per cent of the province was

wooded and there were about 250 sawmills). Even in the predominantly Italian areas

there was a sizeable rural population, principally in central Istria, which had the largest

proportion of Croatian speakers, and in Friuli, whose economy was chiefly dependent on agriculture; what little industry there was had been struggling to recover from

the effects of the First World War. All the towns of Friuli and Venezia Giulia had

some sort of industry16 and a fairly well-developed commercial base; hence their

social make-up was more

complex, with a modest working class and a substantial

petty and middle bourgeoisie. Of all the towns in the region, Trieste unquestionably had the most complete economic and social profile: it had a large upper-middle-class sector

engaged in commerce, finance and industry, a commercial and professional

bourgeoisie, a vast white-collar contingent employed in administration and insurance,

and a large working class employed in various industries, chiefly shipbuilding. Fascism had emerged quite early in Friuli and Venezia Giulia, in 1919/20, but

only in Trieste did it have a substantial presence;17 in the other towns it remained

inconspicuous for some time. The Fascist successes in the 1921 elections were striking,

but did not obliterate the opposition parties, which, like the Slovene and Croatian

parties, received a substantial portion of the vote. After the seizure of power by

Mussolini, the situation changed: the reigning economic and political elites stampeded into the party so as to secure the leading government posts, and Fascism, thanks to

skilful and pervasive propaganda, gained a very wide measure of consent among

almost all social groups. Faced with the difficult task of postwar reconstruction and

the integration of the regional economy with that of Italy, the Fascist government was generous with public money

- especially where industry

was concerned, though

there were also ambitious projects for agricultural improvement and urban restoration.

The policy met with only modest success, but the local Italian population, beguiled

by incessant and insistent propaganda, soon mustered under the Fascist banner; while

the traditional elites were rewarded for their adherence by increased prestige in

Italian politics and the Italian economy, the regime s ferocious nationalism and lavish

promises also appealed to the middle and lower classes. The strength of 'border

16 Monfalcone, Muggia and Fiume had large shipbuilding facilities; Udine, Pordenone and Gorizia

produced mainly textiles. 17

Fascism's first steps in Trieste had been spectacular and entered into the mythology of the movement.

In early 1919 a Fascist movement developed there which in April constituted the Fascio Triestino di

Combattimento. Trieste's Fascio ('band') grew rapidly: in 1921 it was the largest in Italy, with nearly 15,000

members. The membership was augmented by Italian immigrants who had come into Venezia Giulia

after the Great War, including a large number of demobbed soldiers who had been drafted in to replace Austrian civil servants. From 1922 the Fascist Party absorbed the politicians who had hitherto governed the city as liberal-conservative nationalists; in their wake came the higher bourgeoisie of merchants,

industrialists and financiers. The birth of the Fascio Triestino di Combattimento and the first ten years of the Trieste Fasicst Party are described in detail by D. Mettiussi in // Partito NazionaleFascista a Trieste.

Uomini e organizzasione del potere 1919^-1932 (Trieste: Istituto Regionale per la Storia del Movimento di

Liberazione nel Friuli ? Venezia Giulia, 2002).


Fascism',18 as far as these social groups were concerned, were its exaltation of the

Italian spirit and its welfare programme. On the one hand, violent repression of the

substantial ethnic minorities -

particularly the Slovenes and Croatians of Venezia

Giulia and Istria ? satisfied the Italians' thirst for supremacy and seemed to herald

a foreign policy of expansion into the Balkans which would put Trieste in a more

central location and so enable it to fulfil its historic role as 'the Rome of the east'; on the other, a social policy based on lavish welfare payments, omnipresent

mass

movements and the reorganisation of public life had largely won the support of even

the poorest elements in society.

However, while the regime was

widely accepted, and very free with its promises,

many of the lower ranks, particularly outside the big towns, were suffering real

hardship, and there was no rapid overall economic improvement despite the huge

government subsidies. The consequences bore particularly hard on the business sector,

whose prosperity depended on the condition of the port of Trieste, which had always been the main driver of the regional economy but had been in deep recession since

the early 1920s.

It was some years before these problems began to sap the mass popularity of

Fascism, but, once Italy had entered the war, support for Mussolini's regime visibly declined. For a brief period following the Axis conquest of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the people of Friuli and Venezia Giulia appeared to regain confidence in the

Duce and his regime: it seemed that Trieste would at last become the gateway to

the Balkans, as Fascist propaganda had so noisily proclaimed. But this mirage of

power soon vanished: a succession of military defeats, the explosive situation in the

Balkans and the entry into the war of the Soviet Union and the United States - the

great powers ?

produced disillusion and discouragement, and the region's population

developed a positive aversion to the regime which had failed to provide them with a

decent standard of living. Dissatisfaction with Fascist policies which had repeatedly failed to regenerate the region's economy was

supplemented by intense impatience

with the atrocious management of supplies, including the essentials of life - for which

the Party had assumed the entire responsibility - and there was a 'growing distrust

of the men in power.. .who were viewed as incompetent freebooters'.19 After the

invasion of Yugoslavia and the annexation of the province of Ljubljana the Yugoslav armed anti-Fascist resistance intensified and the problem of resistance in the eastern

region assumed a wider import -

not merely political, but nationalistic.

From the outset, the 'border' Fascists, organised into military-style 'civil self

defence squads', had distinguished themselves by their savage attacks on the

Slav communities of Venezia Giulia and Istria. Scores of Slovene and Croatian

organisations had their headquarters destroyed, the worst incident being the burning

18 'Border Fascism' (fascismo di confine) was the term applied to themselves from the outset by the

region's Fascists so as to highlight the ultranationalist inspiration behind the movement. 19

'Rapporto del 31 dicembre 1942 del questore di Trieste al Ministero dell'interno, Direzione gen?rale della pubblica sicurezza, Divisione affari generali e riservati', cited in G. Fogar, 'Trieste', in Collotti et ah,

Dizionario della Resistenza, 600.


of the Narodni Dom, the modern cultural centre that symbolised the strong presence

of the Slovene community in Trieste. As Anna Vinci has commented, this episode

signalled the true birth of Fascism, and its approval by the local press showed

the 'undoubted consensus between liberal nationalist groups and nationalists'.20 With

the Fascists in power throughout Italy, the brutality of the Fascist squads - which were

actually illegal, though generally tolerated by the authorities - was replaced by repres sion by the state, which, far from disowning the worst outrages, backed the violence

by taking radical steps to deprive the ethnic minorities of their national identity: clubs

were shut down, Slovene and Croatian schools suppressed, 'aliens' were excluded

from the economic and political elites, and Slav names Italianised. This despotic Italianisation - which propagandists dressed up as a triumph of Latin civilisation over

primitive Slav peasants ?

was opposed from the late 1920s by various groups, consisting

mostly of young Slovenes with a leavening of Italian anti-Fascists, who took up arms

against the regime. The Slav partisans sought both social recovery and a national

uprising against the Italian oppressor. The Axis occupation of Yugoslavia galvanised the Slav resistance, which under communist guidance assumed a

degree of military

organisation which greatly increased its combative capacity; the guerrilla war even

reached into the towns and was a particular threat to Gorizia and Trieste. Mussolini

ordered draconian reprisals - in April 1942 a Special Public Safety Inspectorate for

Venezia Giulia was set up in Trieste and ordered to crush the partisans without mercy -

but they could not overcome the Yugoslav organisation, which indeed strengthened its recruitment of young Slovenes and Croatians, and also, thanks to its solid political and ideological backing, attracted Italian anti-Fascists with communist leanings. The

Slav partisans became a mass movement under the banner of national recovery,

combining the prospect of socio-political revolution with that of revenge on the

Italian state. From autumn 1942 the communist guerrilla leaders publicly announced

their intention of removing from Italian control the Slovene and Croatian territories

that had been incorporated into the kingdom of Italy. The Italians of Friuli and Venezia Giulia, already suffering from an ill-managed war

economy and discouraged by the disastrous military situation of the Italian army, were

now further afflicted by the immediate day-to-day insecurity generated by resistance

activity and the imminent prospect of losing their primacy as a national group. Like the

rest of Italy, the whole region - even Trieste, which had been a hotbed of Fascism -

produced no hostile reaction to the fall of Mussolini and his regime in July 1943;

indeed, it was greeted with a certain relief. However, the collapse of the regime

ushered in a period of profound collective disorientation, which, while common to

the entire country, 'assumed a further dimension on the eastern frontier, since the

disappearance of Fascism removed the foundation of their principal preoccupation, the defence of their national identity'.21

20 A. M. Vinci, 'Il fascismo e la societ? locale', in Friuli e Venezia Giulia - Storia del '900 (Gorizia:

Editrice Goriziana, 1997), 226. 21 R. Pupo, 'Crisi del regime, guerra totale e Resistenza', in Friuli e Venezia Giulia, 355.


Thus it was that Friedrich Rainer, at the helm of the Nazi administration in

the Adriatisches K?stenland, was able to use the nationalist and ethnic tensions

engendered by Fascist repression as a lever when developing his legitimising strategy,

by offering attractive ?

albeit illusory ?

solutions to the many critical questions that

the former regime had been unable to answer. He had a thorough understanding of

the regional context and strove to find ways of encouraging each of its diverse ethnic

and social groups to look to the Reich, and hence to the local Nazi administration, as the promoter of its national destiny, the guarantor of its socio-political security and

the harbinger of its economic prosperity. The financial, commercial and industrial

elite of Venezia Giulia - and indirectly, all Italians in the region ? were promised

a new dawn of prosperity from the revival of the Trieste port complex as part of

Hitler's new continental order; the workers and peasants were to enjoy the benefits

of the German welfare state; the petty and middle bourgeoisie would be safeguarded

against the social revolution advocated by the communist resistance. And the Slovenes

were given the prospect of reoccupying the important positions which Fascist de

nationalisation had denied them, together with new markets for their timber and

agricultural products.

Propaganda and repression: the two faces of the Nazi civil administration

One of the most effective legitimising and consensus-building tools available to the

German administrators in the Adriatisches K?stenland was propaganda. From the first

days of the occupation they were determined to acquire complete control over every

means of communication in the operations zone. On 10 November 1943 Karl Lapper,

head of Section II - Propaganda, Press and Culture - issued an order that no news

from an Italian source was to be broadcast unless it had been specifically authorised

by his department. Before long Lapper, who had already worked with Rainer in

Carinthia, had built up an efficient propaganda structure which permeated every corner of the territory, organised an intensive programme of radio broadcasts and

(while reducing Trieste's venerable daily // Piccolo to a mere bulletin) created a number

of newspapers and periodicals targeting individual ethnic and national groups.22 The

Nazi propaganda machine in the Adriatisches K?stenland also embraced an illustrated

German-language weekly known as the Adria Illustrierte Zeitung and a daily, the

Deutsche Adria Zeitung, published by Europa Verlag and containing articles from

both the Reich press agencies and the paper's Trieste-based editors.23 The Deutsche

Adria Zeitung, which was available in all the Adriatic provinces, is the best example of

how Rainer s administration used propaganda to legitimise itself vis-?-vis the assorted

national and social groups in the region, and of how the Nazis set about incorporating that region into the Reich.

While Rainer made extensive use of propaganda for the purposes of persuasion, to sustain and nourish the legitimisation strategies of the Nazi administration, the

22 The magazines for Slovenes, Croatians and Friulians -

respectively Groiski List, Glas Primorja and

Voce di Furlania - were particularly successful. 23

The first issue of Deutsche Adria Zeitung appeared on 14 Jan. 1944, the last on 28 April 1945.


incorporation of the Adriatic Coast operations zone into Hitler's planned New

European Order was largely pursued by violence. Opponents of the occupying forces

? Italians no less than Slavs

? were

persecuted and fought with a harshness

almost unequalled in the rest of Nazi-controlled Italy; in fact Trieste housed Italy's

only extermination camp, at Risiera di San Sabba, where more than two thousand

Jews and political opponents perished. The commandant of the San Sabba camp was Obersturmf?hrer Odilo Lothar Globocnick, who had been a fellow-Nazi militant

with Rainer for many years in Austria; Rainer now appointed him chief of police and SS units stationed in the operations zone. Before coming to Trieste Globocnik

had served in the Polish district of Lublin, where, first as local SS and police chief

and then as the director of Aktion Reinhardt, he had been a prime mover in the

extermination of the Jews.24 He brought with him to the operations zone most of

his Aktion Reinhardt associates, and with them the ferocious repressive methods that

had been used in the war of extermination in eastern Europe: murder of prisoners,

savage reprisals against the civilian populations and the destruction of entire villages if they were merely suspected of harbouring partisans.

In view of this extensive use of coercion - which accorded with the strongly

ideological content of the value system peddled by the Nazi administration, however

it might be dressed up ? the use of concepts of consensus and legitimacy to give

the idea that part at least of the population in the operations zone accepted the

Nazi regional government is of critical importance. No power structure can be

considered legitimate unless it is accepted by the majority of the population it governs; the value of that legitimacy depends on the freedom of their acceptance. While a

significant proportion of the population of the Adriatic Coast was willing to accept Nazi government, and to be incorporated into the Reich in the medium term, it

cannot be said that this was a free and fully autonomous choice from among a wider

range of alternatives -

and only in those circumstances can the exercise of power be

deemed truly legitimate.

The future of Trieste in the New European Order

The first steps taken by the German administration of the Adriatisches K?stenland

show unequivocally how determined the Germans were to sever the region's links

with the RSI. Rainer removed the leading political and business figures who had

had links with the former Fascist regime and brought in a large number of civil

servants from Austria; he ratified a new legal order to replace the Italian system,

put a tight curb on the Republican Fascist Party, stopped recruitment for Graziani's

army and prevented the application of the RSI's social legislation. A good measure

24 According to Hilberg, some 1,500,000 persons died in the camps of Belzec, Sobib?r, Treblinka and

Lublin, which were directly controlled by Globocnik, as head of Aktion Reinhardt, between September

1942 and October 1943. See Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3 vols. (New York:

Holmes and Meier, 1985), II, table IX/8. There is a biography of Globocnik by Siegfried Pucher, 'In

der Bewegung f?hrend t?tig'. Odilo Globocnik-K?mpfer f?r den Anschluss, Vollstrecker des Holocaust (Klagenfurt: Drava Verlag, 1997).


of the Nazis' determination to cut off the operations zone from Italy is the fact that

in the first few months of occupation the Reichsbank went so far as to propose

replacing the lire with a new currency, the Adria-Krone, although the project was

eventually given up as impracticable. The high commissioner proposed and intended

to obliterate all traces of Italy and Mussolini's republican Fascist government from

the horizon of the local population and turn their eyes wholly towards the National

Socialist Reich. However, the new symbolic focus, replacing Rome, was to be

not Berlin but Vienna, the capital of the former Austro-Hungarian empire which

had ruled the region wisely and well until the end of the Great War, fostering its

economic development and ensuring peaceful coexistence between national groups.

The Germans christened the operations zone 'Adriatisches K?stenland' because this

name had been used under the Austro-Hungarian empire to denote the lands north

of the Adriatic, showing themselves to be 'shrewd manipulators of nostalgia',25 using

every possible opportunity to recall the happy and prosperous imperial past. At the

heart of this drive to re-forge affective and cultural links with Austria was Trieste, a

city many of whose inhabitants well remembered, if they did not actually pine for, the

recent Austro-Hungarian past. An abundant series of cultural events was organised

to celebrate the restoration of harmony between Vienna and Trieste, notably the

'Wien gr?sst Triest, Triest gr?sst Wien' programme which enabled leading Trieste

musicians to visit Vienna and vice versa.

This pretence that Nazi Germany was the direct heir of the Austro-Hungarian

empire was aimed principally at winning over the Italian middle class, who were

crying out for a new and powerful interlocutor which, unlike the Fascist regime, would be capable of regenerating the region's economy and putting the port of

Trieste at the heart of European commerce. Before the break-up of the Austro

Hungarian empire Trieste had been a hub of central European trade, but it had been

isolated as a result of the geopolitical reshuffle determined by the 1919 Treaty of

St Germain and the subsequent political and economic recovery of Germany. This

loss of European markets could not be compensated for by the incorporation of

Trieste and Fiume into the Italian trading system, in which context Trieste appeared

peripheral and relatively unimportant. Despite repeated promises to turn it into one

of Italy's most internationally important seaports, the Fascists had done nothing to

prevent the volume of trade from diminishing. The local Fascists had proved equally

incapable of dealing with the crisis in Trieste's trade: despite their early prominence,

they had quickly lost influence and representation at national level.

Another serious blow to the economy of Trieste and Venezia Giulia was a

consequence of Austria's absorption into the Reich: the customs union between

the two countries, followed by the Anschluss, reduced imports and exports through Trieste to a trickle. By 1938 over half the overseas trade of Austria, Czechoslovakia

and Hungary had been diverted away from Trieste - its age-old and natural outlet ?

towards north European ports. Without some reconfiguration of central European

geopolitics, the decline of Trieste, ever more bound to a national economy which

25 R. Spazzali, Sotto la Todt (Gorizia: Editrice Goriziana, 1995), 24.


tended to favour Genoa, Naples and Venice, seemed ineluctable. The consequences of

Austria's annexation were not solely economic: the Anschluss also rekindled Austria's

own aspiration, in the wake of Austro-Hungarian expansionism

? now

re-expressed

as part of the Nazi project for a New European Order - to include Trieste in a

Reich-dominated Mitteleuropa. The Italian government was uneasily aware of this

Austrian expansionism, as Galeazzo Ciano noted in his diary on 9 September 1939: 'In Vienna they are already singing a song to the effect that "What we have we hold, and tomorrow we shall go for Trieste". Hatred of Italy is always alive in the German

mind, although the Axis may have temporarily anaesthetised the feeling.'26 The region's political and business elites now saw the question of relations with

the Reich, at this point reaching to their very doorstep, as one of capital importance.

Even setting aside fears of possible annexation ?

which at the time was an idea

confined to certain Austrian Nazi circles and was not part of official Berlin policy ?

their interest in events north of the Alps was increased by the obvious inability of

Fascism to regenerate the maritime trade and economy of the region.

The need to define the political and commercial relationship between Venezia

Giulia and Nazi Germany became particularly urgent in the second half of 1940, when the rapid and seemingly unstoppable advances of the Nazi armies on every front seemed to presage a Nazi victory in Europe. And the end of the war would

bring about Hitler's New Order, a German-dominated political and economic system which would redefine the prerogatives and ambitions of both states and regions all

over the continent: all would stand or fall according to their degree of integration with

this German-controlled system. This was of fundamental importance to Trieste. If its

port facilities were to be put at the service of the Reich, it would once again become

a trading centre of European importance: it would regain its status as Mitteleuropan chief Mediterranean outlet. But if Germany preferred other ports, Trieste would

soon be entirely marginalised.

The region's leading business interests were not slow in pressing the Italian

government to examine ways of ensuring that Trieste would be at the heart of the

continental trade focused on the Reich. In September 1940 the Comitato Triestino

dei Traffici suggested that the government should 'offer German railways... access to

its Trieste and Fiume routes' and suggested that in the near future 'the best plan would

be to make [the port and city of Trieste] a free port'.27 Although Nazi Germany seemed to offer an unmissable opportunity for the economic regeneration of Trieste

and the entire Venezia Giulia, there was some anxiety about what an entry into the

Reich might mean. Trieste's leading businessmen and financiers were particularly worried that Germany, pressed by Austria, would make territorial claims, and that

massive penetration by powerful German finance and business interests would distort

the local economy and jeopardise their own hegemony.

26 G. Ciano, Diario, I: 1939-1940 (Milan/Rome: Rizzoli, 1947), 161.

27 Comitato triestino dei traffici. Esame della nuova situazione dell'Europa centro-orientale, n.p., n.d. (must be

Trieste, 1940), quoted in Elio Apih, Storia delle citta italiane. Trieste (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1988), 138.


The hopes and fears besetting Trieste entrepreneurs emerge limpidly in a letter sent

by a leading businessman, Antonio Cosulich, to the prefect, Dino Borri, in November

1940. Cosulich argued that since Germany was clearly seeking

a Mediterranean outlet,

the Italian government ought to do its best to ensure that the Reich would choose

Fiume and Trieste, since 'owing to their geographical location, [these cities] have

been sacrificed to events that have undermined the economy and trade of their

hinterland'.28 If this did not happen, and Germany found an alternative outlet to the

Mediterranean, 'then almost certainly all the currents of central and eastern European

trade would, sooner or later, [follow] the same route, the same track, and this would

deal a grievous blow to the ports of Trieste and Fiume'. Since, for obvious and

well-rehearsed geographical reasons, Germany's interest would inevitably focus on

Fiume and Trieste, Cosulich considered it absolutely necessary to anticipate requests from the Nazi government. Although the 'political and military comradeship of the

Axis Powers' made it unlikely that Germany was aiming to incorporate Venezia

Giulia into the Reich, Cosulich nonetheless believed that the Reich might aspire to 'a sort of corridor from the Alpine valleys, or more precisely from the borders

of Germany, to the sea, with special conditions for rail traffic, customs and perhaps

public safety'. Cosulich thought that such a claim would be highly detrimental to

Italy's interests and to its European prestige, and would be tantamount to ceding

territory, so the Italian government could only accept it for 'higher reasons that can

be evaluated only at government level'. As a local businessman, Cosulich preferred the

idea of declaring Trieste and Fiume a free port: in that way, Italy would safeguard her

territorial integrity, Germany would have its Mediterranean outlet and, best of all, Trieste would at last recover its status as a commercial hub and a port of international

importance.

Cosulich's idea ? that Trieste should become a free port serving the Reich

economy - was

sparked by the emergency arising from the very recent upheavals

in the European order; it was intended as the most balanced solution possible to what

had been, over most of the previous century, one of the chief dilemmas of Trieste's

history: 'the contrast between national aspirations and economic destiny',29 between

the desire to belong to Italy and the awareness that that choice might acutely restrict

the city's economic and commercial ambitions.

But the war in Europe did not end as soon as anticipated, and from the second

half of 1942 the Axis armies suffered a series of setbacks which put an abrupt curb on

the prospects envisaged by Cosulich and the Trieste port authorities. The armistice

signed on 8 September 1943, the breakdown of the Italo-German alliance and the

creation of the operations zones abruptly refocused attention on the relationship

between Venezia Giulia and Germany and radically re-presented the problem of the

country to which Trieste and Fiume should belong.

28 Letter from Antonio Cosulich to the Prefect of Trieste, Dino Borri, 8 Nov. 1940, Archivio

dell'Istituto Regionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione nel Friuli-Venezia Giulia, VG busta

L/fascicolo XIX. Subsequent citations are from the same document. 29

Pupo, 'Crisi del regime, guerra totale e Resistenza', 347-70.


The German administrators of the Adriatic Coast were well aware that Trieste's

business community wished above all to regain access to central European markets,

and that many of its members had recently expressed a willingness to ally themselves

with a Germany hegemony in the region. Hence the revival of Trieste as a commercial

centre was one of the bastions of the Nazis' legitimisation strategy. While numerous

business leaders expressed an immediate willingness to collaborate with the occupiers, and the high commissioner accordingly appointed German sympathisers to leading administrative and financial positions, the powerful propaganda machine harped

continually on the regeneration of the region's ports as part of a new continental

order, a renewal of the old Austro-Hungarian Mitteleuropa. 'Trieste, Queen of the

Adriatic' (K?nigin der Adria)30 was an alluring and flattering image which could

become reality only if the city strengthened its links with the Reich-dominated

European political and economic system; recent experience had shown that it would

not become reality if Trieste remained part of the Italian state.

The very first issue of the Deutsche Adria Zeitung contained an article setting forth

this Nazi vision and clearly explaining the Reich's plans for the future of the region. Trieste's commercial decline, it said, had been caused by global changes after the First

World War and the subsequent recrudescence of German power, which had created a

huge economic hinterland whose trade had flowed chiefly through Hamburg. When

the European situation took a turn for the worse, continued the article, the Italian

government -

by which it quite explicitly meant the Fascists - had proved utterly

incapable of sustaining the port of Trieste by incorporating it profitably into the

pattern of Italian trade. The Reich, on the other hand, would be able to revitalise

Trieste's economy: 'in the new Europe, after the war -

Europe re-forged according

to the Nazi design ? all ports will be open to the world and Trieste will once again

become the Europe's emporium for the south and south-east... the advantage of its

closeness to Mitteleuropa and relative closeness of the Levant, which has benefited it

so little since the end of the First World War, will surely prove positive for Trieste in

the new Europe'.31

'The interests of a commercial centre like Trieste', explained the Deutsche Adria

Zeitung, 'extend far beyond its immediate hinterland and indeed its nation. For

[Trieste] a large part of Europe is a vital sphere of influence in which it must take the

keenest interest.'32 The people of Trieste could not stand aside from the destiny of

Europe because their city's future depended on it: without peace and order north of

the Alps, Trieste would never regain access to the vast continental markets. And only a Nazi victory could bring that about, re-establishing the natural geopolitical order

of Europe and ending the 'unnatural national groupings'33 set up in the Balkans by

30 See 'Die "K?nigin der Adria". Triest in Krieg und Frieden', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 19 (1 Feb.

1944). 31

'Europas Fenster ins Mittelmeer. Die Hafenstadt Triest im Wandel der Zeiten', Deutsche Adria

Zeitung 1 (14 Jan. 1944). 32 'Krise oder Chance', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 274 (15 Oct. 1944). 33

'Triestiner Perspektiven-Raumkr?fte und Standortfaktoren der Hafenstadt', Deutsche Adria Zeitung

31 (13 Feb. 1944).


the victorious powers after the First World War. France and Britain, explained the

Adria Zeitung, had used these artificial statelets to extend their economic power right into the heart of Europe; their policy was to foment ethnic and national chaos so as

to impose their own supremacy, on the 'divide and rule' principle. It was in the best

interests of Germany, on the other hand, to pacify peoples and nations and set up a

harmonious politico-economic system that would sweep away the customs barriers,

the crippling taxes and other obstacles imposed by outdated economic concepts.

Only in such an international context could Trieste regain its natural commercial

hinterland, 'which once extended as far as Frankfurt am Main, Prague and Warsaw'.34

The Germans had a clear idea of the city's future. If they won the war, Trieste would

be incorporated into the Reich. No other view would satisfy Nazi Germany, and the

propagandists took care to point out that no other would be satisfactory for Trieste.

In spring 1944 certain voices began to call quite insistently for Trieste to be declared a

'free city' after the war. Immediately, an article appeared in the Deutsche Adria Zeitung

arguing that such an option would have a catastrophic impact on the city's political

autonomy and economic prosperity. To illustrate the awful consequences of any

such false step, the German propagandists cited the plight of Danzig (now Gdansk,

Poland), the old Hanseatic port that had been declared a 'free city' in 1919.35 Far

from becoming the fulcrum of eastern and central European trade, as it had wished,

the internationalisation of Danzig had cut it off from the trade routes of the very countries that were

supposed to constitute its economic hinterland: Germany had

preferred its own ports (particularly Hamburg and Bremen), and Poland had set up its own trading centre, the port of Gdingen. Not until Danzig was reabsorbed into

the Reich-dominated economic and trading system had it begun to flourish once

again, or its population recover the financial and social security it had once had. The

troubles of Danzig must serve as an awful warning to Trieste: if the latter wanted

economic prosperity in future it must immediately abandon the will-o'-the-wisp 'free port' idea and seek the protection of a stable and powerful state that could

provide it with a wide and wealthy hinterland. In view of Italy's previous failures and

the recent collapse of the Fascist government, the only candidate in central Europe

was the Reich.

Plans and models for a new welfare state

It was not only the rich who were offered prosperity by the Nazi Reich. All workers

along the Adriatic coast would profit enormously from German government -

explained the German propagandists - and the humblest would benefit most, because

the Germans had set up the most complete, best-articulated welfare state that had

ever existed. Rainer painted an idyllic picture of working conditions in Germany and

indicated that very soon these would be extended to Adriatic workers. This enabled

34 'Handelszentrum Triest', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 122 (15 May 1944).

35 'Das Schicksal einer freien Stadt. Brief an einen Triestiner', Deutsche Adria Zeitung in (4 May

1944).


him to contrast the glowing prospect of life under the Nazis with the dire realities of

the former Fascist administration.

Even before things had got worse owing to Italy's entry into the war, the living standards of most lower-class people in Friuli and Venezia Giulia had been profoundly

unsatisfactory In the countryside the rapid failure of sbracciantizzazione (a campaign to eliminate the class of braccianti or agricultural day labourers by giving them small

plots of land) had reduced many agricultural workers to abject poverty, while factory workers had been savagely exploited. Working hand in glove with the regime, factory owners had pinned down wages, jacked up production and virtually ignored poor

working conditions and considerations of safety. This exploitation of the workforce,

thinly disguised under welfare initiatives brought in amidst a blaze of publicity by industrialists working with the Party and the Fascist trade union (every workplace

had a unit of the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro),36 triggered numerous protests and

goaded some worker groups into organising clandestine anti-Fascist activities. In the

most heavily industrialised parts of Venezia Giulia 'the prefects' anxious surveillance

of the workforce ... betrayed an awareness that a

large section of the population did

not assent to the dictatorship'.37 Rainer, in an attempt to heal the breach between

the regional government and workers in industry and ensure that the latter actively

supported his regime, constructed a propaganda image of a Nazi administration

sensitive to the needs of the poorest in society and ready to fly to their assistance.

The Deutsche Adria Zeitung admitted that a complete reform of the social system had to await the end of the war and the region's incorporation into the Reich, but Rainers administration was aware of the Fascists' disastrous social policy and

was paying the closest attention to the working environment; to this end the high commissioner had set up a

special department, the 'factory workers' bureau'.38

Its remit was to support workers in every way, from ensuring proper health and

safety conditions to promoting cultural and recreational activities. It would start by

providing workers with new clothes ?

from overalls to overshoes -

because (explained

the Adria Zeitung) it had been noticed that men were often forced to wear old,

inadequate clothing. The bureau would also provide work canteens39 which would

be instrumental in overcoming the food problems caused by the war, ensuring that

everyone got a full and satisfying meal. Finally, the bureau would distribute extra

cigarette rations, since 'although some might think that cigarettes are not really a

fundamental need of life, it must be acknowledged that they are one of the little things that make life a bit easier and more endurable.... Therefore the factory workers'

36 This 'National Institute for After-Work Activities' was set up as a public body in 1925 to develop

and manage welfare and recreation projects not only in factories but also in town and country. It was the

model for the Nazis' Kraft durch Freude organisation, which was set up by the Deutsche Arbeitsfront.

The best study of the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND) is V. de Grazia, Consenso e cultura di massa

nellTtalia Fascista. L'organizzazione del Dopolavoro (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1981). 37

Vinci, 'II fascismo e la societ? locale', 241-2. 38

'Soziale Betretung der Schaffenden', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 188 (21 July 1944). 39

The Deutsche Adria Zeitung devoted a long article to these work canteens, which, it claimed, came

in under the German occupation: 'Werkk?chen in Italien: Wermachtseinrichtungen fur die Arbeiter', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 84 (6 April 1944).


bureau, in collaboration with the High Commissioner's business department, had

always taken care to provide its proteges with an extra cigarette ration from time to

time.' The German propagandists were anxious to stress that recreational and cultural

activities in the workplace would always be seen as fundamental to the welfare

system, rather than an accessory: 'Meeting the cultural needs of the workers is just

as important

as material assistance. To quote a well-known saying, man does not live

by bread alone.'40 The newspaper waxed particularly lyrical about the Werkskonzerte:

regular concerts given during lunch breaks in the region's main factories, attended

by workers, managers and representatives of the Nazi administration.

This new welfare and protection system on the German model would not be forced

on the workers, explained the Deutsche Adria Zeitung: they would play an active part in

its construction in collaboration with the Nazis. Commissioner Rainer himself liked

to demonstrate his willingness to engage in productive dialogue with the region's workers. On 20 February, not

long after the German administration was set up, the

newspaper reported on a

meeting between the gauleiter and a workers' delegation.

Rainer had begun by making a speech of welcome in which he expounded a favourite

concept of Nazi social ideology: the elimination of all social classes and distinctions.

'The supreme law of all true socialism', he said, 'should be that there is no privileged class and no one is entitled to live at other people's expense'. After which, reported

the Deutsche Adria Zeitung, he held a long conversation with the workers, 'discussing economic and social matters and listening to their requests',41 promising that the

latter would receive the fullest consideration from the German authorities.

The real experience of workers in the operations zone was quite different from this

rosy propaganda picture. No doubt Rainer was sincere in his desire to review wages and salaries, and he made a

demagogic promise personally to ensure the creation

of a welfare system; but the scanty measures actually taken were quite insufficient

to guarantee workers, especially manual workers, a decent standard of living, and if

improvements were made to working conditions in the factories, they merely papered over the cracks. Propaganda carried small conviction to people who endured daily

privation and overwork; shipyard workers in particular ?

to whom communism had

much more appeal than Nazism

- were prominent in the Italian resistance, many of

them joining the 'Garibaldi' brigades in the mountains of Friuli.

Conditions were particularly bad for those working for the Todt organisation, either on the impressive defences being constructed to guard against a potential Allied

invasion of the Adriatic coast or on securing vital road and rail links, which were

being continually damaged by partisan attacks.42 While the propagandists promised new clothes and shoes, abundant food and generous wages, the Todt workers

-

ostensibly volunteers, but most of them under coercion ? were forced to work in

appalling conditions, dressed in rags, living in improvised barracks near the building

40 'Soziale Betretung der Schaffenden'.

41 'Arbeiter beim Obersten Kommissar', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 36 (20 February 1944).

42 For a detailed account of the Todt organisation in the Adriatic Coast operations zone see Spazzali, Sotto la Todt.


sites, ill-fed and subject to implacable Nazi surveillance. The wages, it is true, were

not to be despised, being rather above the regional average. But those who benefited

most from Rainers labour policies were not the manual workers but the numerous

entrepreneurs who chose to collaborate with the Nazis and made huge profits out of

munitions orders with the help of a thoroughly browbeaten workforce.

Besides wooing workers in the regional economy, the German propagandists

had another primordial objective: to persuade as many local men as possible to go and work in Germany, either in munitions factories or for the Todt organisation.

This recruitment of workers was a major preoccupation, vigorously pursued by

the German occupiers all over Italy, not merely in the Adriatisches K?stenland: it

engaged the attention of both the Reich plenipotentiary for the employment of

labour, Friedrich Sauckel, and the Wehrmacht. When calls for volunteers proved

unprofitable, from early 1944 Sauckel's organisation began to round up workers. But

even forced recruitment did not yield the expected results: from 8 September onwards

a mere 87,517 Italians went to Germany, whereas the Germans had expected to send

at least a million and a half. As Klinkhammer has pointed out, this failure was partly caused by rivalry between various elements in the Nazi occupation apparatus, and

partly by curbs imposed on German rapacity by the RSI, whose representatives were

quite successful in frustrating deportation plans, at least at local level.43

In the Adriatisches K?stenland, the extraordinary concentration of power in the

hands of the high commissioner, the lesser number of potentially rival German

officials and the impotence of local RSI representatives made it very much easier to

recruit manpower. Before satisfying the needs of the Reich, however, Rainer was

anxious to ensure that organisations working in the zone, particularly the Todt,44 had

first call on the workforce; only then would he encourage workers to go to Germany, either voluntarily

or under coercion. The propagandists -

whose work is, once again,

best represented by the Deutsche Adria Zeitung ? then set out to laud the perfection of

the Nazi welfare state and the very real benefits always available to German workers

and Italians working in the Reich.

First and foremost, the Adria Zeitung trumpeted the social harmony that Germany had enjoyed ever since Hitler came to power. Without underplaying the profound differences between the situation in Germany and in Italy

? where working-class

agitation had precipitated the crisis in the Fascist regime - the newspaper declared that

national socialism had won the hardest and most decisive battle: it had dismantled the

43 On voluntary and enforced recruitment of Italian labour see Klinkhammer, L'occupazione, 131-77.

Studies of the experiences of Italian workers in Germany include C. Bermani, AI lavoro nella Germania di

Hitler. Racconti e memorie dell'emigrazione italiana, 1937?1943 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998); B. Mantelli,

'Camerati al lavoro'. I lavoratori italiani emigrati nel Terzo Reich nel periodo dell'Asse 1938?1943 (Florence: La

Nuova Italia, 1992); C. Bermani, S. Bologna and B. Mantelli, Proletarier der Achse'. Sozialgeschichte der

italienischen Fremdarbeitt in NS-Deutschland (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997); L. Ricciotti, Gli schiavi di

Hitler. I deportati italiani in Germania nella seconda guerra mondiale (Milan: Mondadori, 1996). 44

The primary importance of labour recruitment in the eyes of the Nazi administration is clear from

Rainers Order 8, issued on 29 Nov. 1943, governing military service in the operations zone: labour in

the ranks of the Todt, or in Germany, was put on a par with joining the German army or the local

defence militia. See Spazzali, Sotto la Todt, 85-7.


old, class-based social system - which inevitably generated civil strife, weakening the

cohesion and strength of the nation - and replaced it with a single national community to which all could feel they belonged, irrespective of social status. Of course, this

had taken continued persuasion and indoctrination: 'above all, national socialism has

educated the German people into a conscious and responsible community of destiny and work'.45 But education and persuasion would have been in vain if the Reich had

not actually constructed a model society that could offer tangible benefits to every

citizen, even the most destitute being covered by an

extraordinary and unequalled

welfare state. Sublimely ignoring the reality (which was very different), the Deutsche

Adria Zeitung declared that German workers could truly call themselves fortunate, since they had full accident insurance,46 all their needs were met by the welfare system, their health service was the best in the world,47 their workplaces were salubrious and

quiet and the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) provided them with an

indispensable programme of recreational and cultural activities that had formerly been

the prerogative of the rich. The Reich had devoted particular attention to women

workers: they worked shorter hours, in less taxing jobs, and were offered frequent breaks from work; those with children enjoyed so many advantages that they were

guaranteed a level of protection 'unknown in any other country in the world'.48

The best witnesses to the wonders of the German welfare state were, of course,

Italians working in factories in the Reich. Although not all the benefits of peacetime could be offered as long as the war lasted, the Deutsche Adria Zeitung assured its Italian

readers that their compatriots in Germany had no reason to complain, since they

received equal treatment with German workers in every respect, and undoubtedly

enjoyed better conditions than their opposite numbers in Italy. The Adria Zeitung declared that recruits to the Todt organisation had also been warmly welcomed by their German hosts: from the choice of food - all imported from Italy

- to leisure

activities, everything in the Todt camps had been specially designed to make Italians

'feel at home'.49

Workers returning to Italy would of course give amazed and admiring accounts of

the Utopian conditions they had met with in German factories, to the envy of their

stay-at-home colleagues. In March 1944, the Deutsche Adria Zeitung reported, a group

of workers' representatives from Trieste had been invited to meet with Gauleiter

Rainer to learn about German provision for workers in the Adriatic region. Their

sole request was to be treated equally with workers in the Reich: 'All we want is

to be like German workers.... Once again comrades of ours have returned from

German and told us how German workers live. Why can't we have the same?'50

45 'Deutsche Sozialpolitik', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 95 (18 April 1944).

46 'Die deutsche Unfallversicherung', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 264 (5 Oct. 1944).

47 'Tuberkolose. Neuartige Untersuchungs- und Erfassungsmethoden', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 104

(27 April 1944). 48

'Deutsche Arbeitsschutzbestimmungen-Die soziale Stellung der Frau im Arbeitsleben', Deutsche

Adria Zeitung 234 (5 Sept. 1944). 49

'Italiener in Deutschland', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 1 (14 Jan. 1944). 50

'Triester Arbeiter', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 52 (5 March 1944).


The Deutsche Adria Zeitungs enthusiastic accounts disagreed violently with those

of Italian workers who had gone to Germany in the late 1930s or later. A confidential

memorandum of the Italian political police sheds light on the dire reality of life in

the work camps:

The Italians live in barracks and camps, with no facilities whatever, like animals, fed on a handful

of potatoes and sauerkraut; they are watched incessantly and their every movement is observed.

Most of them would like to come home to Italy, but they cannot; a few run away but are stopped at the frontier; even those who have worked out their six-month contract are forced to renew it for

another six months... Even the unemployed are no longer tempted by the wages or the chance of

adventure. The propaganda being spread by those returning from Germany is just too persuasive.51

The fact that verbal reports from returnees were more effective than official

propaganda is demonstrated by the more or less disastrous outcome of the March

1944 call-up in the operations zone: of the 1,400 labourers summoned to Trieste

only seventy-five showed up, suitcase in hand, at the Nazi command posts. The great

majority of those who left the Adriatic coastlands for German factories went under

coercion, not because they were convinced by the purple prose of propaganda.52

Propaganda and ethnic policies

Nationalist policies and their supporting propaganda were fundamental to Rainers

legitimising strategies. Whereas the Fascists had, from the first, pursued a policy of radical Italianisation, the Nazis preferred to accentuate the region's ethnic

fragmentation so as to sever links with Italy and with Fascism, and present the

Germans as the only force capable of ensuring that all the national groups lived

peaceably side by side. To this end, the Germans also exploited the fiction of Germany as a natural entity, the heir of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which had been a rare

example of a multi-ethnic state and had governed the northern Adriatic territories

successfully by recognising the autonomy of all the national groups and limiting

competition among them.

Rainers complicated ethnic jigsaw included three major 'nationalities' ? Slovenes,

Italians and Friulians -

and a number of ethnic minorities, including Cicci and Mor

lacchi. The ethnic mix was further complicated -

or rendered even more chaotic ?

by Rainer s deliberate insertion of a substantial and pugnacious Cossack community from eastern Europe, which settled in the valley of the river Tagliamento. The

Cossacks were entrusted with defending the territory against the partisans, and in

return for this military service, and for their fidelity to the Reich, they were promised a permanent homeland in this part of the operations zone, referred to as 'Kosakenland'

in German documents and propaganda.

The national group most favoured by the Nazis was the Slovenes, who had been

harshly persecuted by the Fascists. While the Wehrmacht and the SS mercilessly hounded the partisan guerrillas, Rainer, anxious to create a solid front of Slovene

51 Quoted in Bermani, Al lavoro nella Germania di Hitler, 159.

52 Of the 659 men who left for Germany in April 1944, for example, only 33 were volunteers, 67

were called up and 556 were recruited by force (Spazzali, Sotto la Todt, 85-7).


loyalty and prevent the Slav resistance from turning into a nationalist crusade,

reopened Slovene-language schools, set up collaborationist militias and put Slovenes

into important local government positions. However, this attempt to construct a

Slovene collaborationist front presented some

insuperable difficulties: first, because

the partisan movement that had arisen in late 1941 had substantial popular support

and, second, because Slovenia, which was overwhelmingly rural, almost entirely

lacked the trade- and industry-oriented middle class that would have seen Nazi

Germany as an

advantageous trading partner justifying collaboration. The creation

of a Slovene collaborationist force under Nazi control was directed by the mayor of Ljubljana, General Leon Rupnik, who re-formed the militias attached to various

Slovene anti-communist groups into the ranks of the domobrani (defenders of the

homeland).53 Rainer's other concession to the Slovenes

- in sharp contrast to the Nazis'

traditional discrimination against Slavs ? was also intended to demote the Italian

element of the population by challenging its primacy in those areas that were most

significant to those with nationalist and irredentist sentiments, having proved fertile

ground for a Fascism which had nailed its colours to the mast of national recovery and

disenfranchisement of the Slavs. In order to demolish the Fascist image of Friuli and

Venezia Giulia as solidly and monolithically Italian, the Nazi propagandists stressed

the fact that the region was deeply marked by its Slav past and that the Slav ethnic

component was essential to its identity. In its first issue, the Deutsche Adria Zeitung set

out to explain that at Trieste's very doors there were two

completely different worlds,

wholly opposed to each other in every way. Only twenty-five minutes' journey from

the city lay the village of Opicina: 'here begins that part of the Adriatic Coast where

the mother tongue is Slovene, and people have different names, look different, and

live a different kind of life':54 this part of the operations zone had almost nothing Italian about it, and everything bore witness that it was not part of Italy. On the other

hand, the article went on, a journey of a few miles to the south-east of Trieste would

bring one to Muggia,

a place of glorious Italian traditions, with ancient Roman walls

and an important early Christian church, a

living witness to its Roman roots, wholly

and entirely Italian.

To subvert the unity of Italian nationals and Italian speakers, the Deutsche Adria

Zeitung, and the whole Nazi propaganda machine, stirred up the embers of Friulian

separatism. Even the Fascists had celebrated the myth of Friulian identity, lauding the bravery shown by Friulians in the First World War, their robust peasant character

and their glorious past under the Roman empire.55 But Nazi propaganda followed

a completely different tack: intent on dismantling the links between the regional minorities and Italian history and culture, the Nazis said nothing either of the

Friulians' Roman past or of their heroism in the Great War, dwelling rather on

53 L. Chersovani, 'Alcuni aspetti della politica del partito comunista sloveno (Pcs-Kps) nella zona

d'operazioni Adriatisches K?stenland (1943-1945)', Qualestoria 1/2 (1995), 29. 54

'Von Opicina nach Muggia. Zwei Welten vor den Toren Triests', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 1 (14 Jan.

1944). 55

Vinci, 'II fascismo e la societ? locale', 241, 242.


their solid links with Germany. The Deutsche Adria Zeitung devoted a good deal of

space to flattering articles about the uniqueness of Friuli s history and the greatness of its people, the ancientness of its traditions and the extraordinary beauty of its

landscapes. In particular, it stressed the links between Friuli and the Hohenstaufen

emperor Frederick II, recalling that even in those far-off days Friuli had been an

integral part of the great German Reich and calling attention to the respect it had

earned from German princes and from the emperor.56 Friuli s long and glorious

history, along with its rich cultural and ethnic heritage, entitled it to be considered

as much more than just one element of the Adriatisches K?stenland. Its culture and

traditions must not merely be preserved, they must be given the strength and vigour

they deserved. To show the high respect in which the Friulian community was

held by the Nazi administration - and the Third Reich as a whole ? from May 1944 Radio Trieste broadcast a daily programme entitled Die Stunde der Friulaner (Friulians'

Hour), which (according to the Deutsche Adria Zeitung) was always a big hit with the

population. As another contribution to this positive reassessment of'Furlanentum' ?

the Friulian nation ?

a weekly newspaper began to appear, under the title Voce di

Furlania, full of local patriotism and separatist declarations, which 'must have had its

effect, if it is true that this period gave birth to certain aspects of Friulian autonomist

thinking -

perhaps only the most petty and parochial ones'.57

Rainer s administration encouraged these concrete and propagandistic endeavours

to exploit the ethno-nationalistic complexity of the region in order to present Nazism

as a force for order, capable of soothing nationalistic antagonisms and restoring the

harmony which the region had enjoyed under the Habsburgs but lost under Italian

rule. Once again the German administration sought to legitimise itself through contrast with Fascist failures: whereas the Fascists had applied a misguided nationalist

policy whose main achievement had been to destroy the region s ethnic balance,

the Nazis would prove themselves able to govern this bundle of nationalities by

acknowledging their individuality while ensuring that they lived together in peace and harmony. In the operations zone, explained the Deutsche Adria Zeitung, there were

'so many nationalities, so many different forces, that they inevitably clash from time

to time'.58 And these ethnic clashes could combine with political, religious and social

divisions which the Fascists had not only failed to heal but had crassly exacerbated:

one need only look at the Italian contingent to see how it had been internally split between 'the moderates, who reject all extremes, the Fascists, the Monarchists, the

Bolshevists and the so-called patriots, who are against everyone else'. Nor could the

Slavs claim to be united; they not only had political differences, but also ongoing

dangerous religious conflicts. 'The hotbed of political and national passions' along the Adriatic Coast made it into one of the most fervid and unstable regions in the

whole of Europe. Only the Nazis were capable of guaranteeing the peace and safety

56 'Der Hoftag in Friaul. Der Hohenstaufe Friedrich II und sein europ?isches Reich', Deutsche Adria

Zeitung 169 (2 July 1944). . 57 E. Collotti, // Litorale Adri?tico nel Nuovo ordine europeo (Milan: Vangelista, 1974), 45.

58 'Freundliche Zueignung', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 83 (25 March 1945). Further citations in the text

are from the same article.


of these peoples: 'all these forces are wisely held in check by the German hand, one

more proof that even at this - perhaps the most difficult and critical -juncture of its

own history, Germany is the only true power that can guarantee order in Europe'.

Defending Western civilisation: the anti-partisan struggle as interpreted

by the Deutsche Adria Zeitung

The Nazi high command was wrong in thinking that the British and US forces in

Italy intended to attack the Adriatisches K?stenland from the sea: the region, in the

charge of Wehrmacht general Ludwig Kubier, never saw any conflict between the

German armies and the Allies. Apart from frequent massive British and US air raids59

and a few small-scale diversionary raids by the British on the Istrian coast, the only enemies who threatened the Nazi government in the Adriatic region were Slav and

Italian partisans. Resistance units -

especially Slav ones, which were comparatively

well organised and equipped -

proved such a thorn in the side of the German

army that in February 1944 General Kubier issued a harsh set of pronouncements

authorising reprisals against the civil population if it were even suspected that they had given help to the partisans:

This is war up to the hilt - it is our enemies who have decided it_We have only one option,

to use terror against terror, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!... In war anything that leads to

success is legitimate and necessary. I will endorse any pronouncement to that end. Captured bandits

are to be hanged or shot. Anyone who voluntarily gives aid to these bandits, by giving them food

or shelter, concealing their presence or in any other way, deserves death and must be eliminated.'60

This pitiless 'war up to the hilt' against the partisans ? in which the Germans also

used Italian army units stationed in the region - was backed by a huge propaganda

campaign through which the Nazis not only sought to justify the unprecedented violence of the repression but also, and more

importantly, proposed a further source

of legitimacy for the German occupation. The struggle between the Nazis in the

Adriatic operations zone and the resistance units was presented not as a war for

control of the region -

far less a 'war of liberation' from the partisans -

but as a

struggle between the defenders of Western civilisation and revolutionary proponents of Bolshevik anarchy.

The Nazi government of the Adriatisches K?stenland strove to win the support of

the local people for a civil war not between communism and Nazism, but between

revolution and stability, terror and order. The 'revolutionaries', as presented by the

Adria Zeitung, did have an ideology, but their destructive fury was directed not

against the German army, as the military wing of the local Nazi administration, or

even against a politically distinct group, but against the entire civil community and

all its most cherished social and cultural values. According to the Nazi propagandists the communist partisans would not stop at bringing down the Nazi administration: if

59 According to research by Galliano Fogar, 'the bombing raids [on Trieste] caused about six hundred

fatalities and thousands of injuries': see G. Fogar, 'Trieste', in Collotti et al, Dizionario della Resistenza, 602.

60 Collotti, II Litorale Adri?tico, 88.


they succeeded, this would fatally subvert the whole value system of Western society.

The victory of the Resistance would mean a return to barbarism; only by accepting the legitimacy of the German administration and collaborating with the Wehrmacht

would it be possible to maintain the moral, civic and ethical safeguards that the

revolutionary enemy had sworn to destroy.

The stakes were so high that each and every citizen along the Adriatic coast

must take part in the struggle: 'it would be unforgivably short-sighted for the local

inhabitants to expect the Germans to protect their livelihoods and their future without

themselves contributing to this task with equal force and dedication. Every citizen

who wants to live in peace, enjoying the fruits of his labours and his family life, is

threatened in both his material and his physical existence.'61 No one could remain

passive or wait on chance: it was up to 'every citizen, [every] reasonable man, to

help all right-thinking people to frustrate these bandits and reject those who sit on

the fence as eternally passive spectators' and begin

to weave that web of personal

relationships, of'conscious private surveillance',62 which would sooner or later bring

down the enemies of justice and of liberty This call for collaboration was backed by clear and unequivocal threats of reprisals.

While every partisan attack would inevitably be followed by reprisals against civilians

and prisoners, the propagandists warned that anyone who did not collaborate

wholeheartedly would be considered as an enemy and treated as such. In the midst

of a civil war, there was no difference between someone who failed to stand apart from the partisans and someone who actively supported them:

every reasonable man must contribute resolutely, to the limits of his strength, to the struggle against

these bandits. Some attacks could have been averted if those who heard about such criminal plans had immediately denounced them, or tried to catch the perpetrators. It is shamefully cowardly and short-sighted of some people to believe that these bandit attacks do not concern them, just because it does not happen to be their house that is burning down, or they who have been hit by

the bullets... In future we shall in every case take the harshest and most forcible measures against

these bandits and all their accomplices.63

When ordinary warnings and intimidation proved insufficient, the Germans did

not hesitate to use the direst threats and most terrifying propaganda. Any reprisals

against civilians accused of collaborating with the partisans always received massive

publicity. After one partisan attack, and the consequent reprisals, a poster immediately

appeared which read:

Men and women of the Adriatic Coast! For several months the German authorities have been

informing you of numerous acts of destruction by Bolshevik bandits; these horrifying crimes could

not have been perpetrated without the consent of the population and the authorities have shown

61 'Spaten und Gewehr. Ein Wort zu den Selbstschutzverb?nden', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 76 (29 March

1944). The previous citation in the text is from the same article. 62

'Terroristen, Idealisten, Attentisten. Ein Appell an die Bev?lkerung zur Wahrung der Ruhe und

Sicherheit', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 107 (30 April 1944). 63

'Jeder Terror wird gebrochen werden! Deutsche Stellungnahme zu den Vorg?ngen in Opicina', Deutsche Adria Zeitung (8 April 1944). 'Criminal plans' refers to a partisan attack on German soldiers near

Opicina, just outside Trieste.


you the right path to follow... On 15 February 1944, as punishment for the vile assault on a

German ?

Italian column between Comeno and Rifembergo, 150 bandits were executed. The

villages of Comeno, Tomasevizza, Dol Piccolo, Rifembergo and Britovac, and some houses in

Scherbina, have been razed to the ground because they were sheltering the bandits; the population was evacuated and may return as soon as calm is restored and their ideas have been adjusted. Any

future offences will be punished in the same way... It now depends on you whether your fathers,

sons, brothers etc., now in German police protection, remain in custody or are restored to you.

We shall resume our earlier mildness if the population helps us to restore law and order. BUT WE

SHALL HIT BACK THREE TIMES HARDER, IF THIS WARNING IS NOT HEEDED. WE ARE THE STRONGEST.64

This practice of publicising reprisals, however brutal, was entirely typical of Nazi

deterrent propaganda - the Deutsche Adria Zeitung published gruesome accounts and

photographs of German vengeance -

remained unofficial for some time, but was

normalised and extended to the whole of Nazi-occupied Italy by order of General

Albert Kesserling on 1 July 1944.65 Nazi anti-partisan propaganda

was aimed at the widest possible swathe of the

population, irrespective of social status, ethnicity or nationality, and even political orientation. Solidarity with the Germans was presented not as an ideological choice

but as a civil and political one in the widest sense. Fighting the partisans did not

necessarily mean

espousing national socialist politics; it was the only effective way of

defending Western culture and tradition against the menace of Bolshevik revolution.

For example, explained the Deutsche Adria Zeitung, Nazi-organised defence groups or Selbstschutzverb?nde

have arisen not for ideological reasons but from the exigencies of self-defence. Anyone who thinks

he can take part in the great ideological struggle without contributing to the defence of our country

is deluding himself. Those who refuse to let themselves be slaughtered without a fight, and are

resolved to defend themselves actively, need not fear being labelled with any sort of 'ism' that is

not truly close to their hearts. Those who chose to join a self-defence group are not swearing

allegiance to national socialism or any other ideology, but choosing their own party, the party of

fellow-citizens united in their will to deliver their country from chaos.

The partisans were not

regular soldiers, who would respect the civilian population,

but Banditen and Terroristen ?

common criminals out to plunder the property of honest

citizens and disrupt the even tenor of their lives. To oppose their spread, fight against them by joining one of the Selbstschutzverb?nde, and denounce them to the German

authorities was the only course for anyone anxious to defend his own property and

ensure that the safety of his nearest and dearest:

this is a fight for all you hold most dear, your life, your property, the happiness of your family!

City-dwellers, you can do something to save the peasant from having to yield his crops to the

64 Archivio delTlstituto Regionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione nel Friuli - Venezia

Giulia, busta IX, doc. no. 618. 65

'Wherever there is a substantial presence of partisan bandits, some of the local male population is

to be arrested, the numbers to be decided ad hoc, and they are to be shot if any acts of violence occur.

The population must be informed of this. If soldiers are attacked the village whence the shots were fired

is to be burned. Criminals and ringleaders are to be publicly hanged.' Cited in R. Kaltenegger, Zona

d'operazione Litorale Adri?tico (Gorizia: Libreria Editrice Goriziana, 1996), 66.


bandits instead of bringing them in to market. Peasants, you can do something to ensure that your cows are not slaughtered by the bandits. You young men who now lounge about with your hands

in your pockets can do something to prevent the door clanging shut on your future. And workers,

your consciences should tell you that you must raise your industrious hands, now and always, to

keep the bread in your own mouths and ensure that society can enjoy the fruits of your labours.

God helps those who help themselves!66

This apparently non-political and non-nationalistic appeal to defend local values and

traditions was not peculiar to the Nazis of the Adriatisches K?stenland: it featured

regularly in both operations zones. In the province of Trento, part of operations zone

Alpenvorland, the Germans commissioned the local prefect, Bertolini, to set up a

'security corps', backed up by a propaganda campaign explaining that it was 'a militia

in the service of law and order and local well-being' which would win the support of

'all who love their country and want it to come through these times without sinking into disorder'.67 By promoting such volunteer groups, in whose constitution the

Italian authorities apparently played the leading part by making personal appeals for

recruits, the Germans not only procured additional forces to use against the partisans

but also, and more importantly, suborned the Italian authorities to legitimise the

Germans' role as defenders of the local community, its traditions and values.

Italian collaboration

How did the Italian population in the Adriatisches K?stenland respond to the Nazis'

legitimising strategies? An idea can be gained from the conduct and motivation of

the men who held the most important local government positions in Trieste under

the Nazis.68 It must be pointed out that while there was collaboration throughout the German-occupied

areas of northern Italy, the two operations zones were in many

ways exceptional. In other areas, those who took the German side could say that

their collaboration was 'filtered' through the RSI, notionally an independent Italian

sovereign state. But in the Adriatisches K?stenland and the Alpenvorland German

power was unmediated by any Italian governmental authority, and those who chose to

collaborate put themselves directly at the service of the occupiers, incurring a

heavy

burden of responsibility because they claimed to be representing the whole Italian

community but in fact became part, however indirectly and in however subordinate

a capacity, of the Nazi administrative machine.

In Trieste the two most important offices were conferred on prominent members

of the upper middle class: the prefect was Bruno Cociani, the podesta was Cesare

Pagnini, formerly president of the Italo-German Association of Venezia Giulia. After

the war, like the vast majority of people who held public office under the Nazis,

66 'Spaten und Gewehr. Ein Wort zu den Selbstschutzverb?nden', Deutsche Adria Zeitung 76 (29 March

1944) 67

'Per l'ordine', // trentino 16-17 (November 1943), quoted in Ganapini, La Repubblica delle camicie

nere, 359. 68

On collaboraton in Trieste see G. Fogar, 'Capitalismo collaborazionista e guardia civica', Qualestoria

(1976), 33-7; A. M. Vinci, 'Trieste 1943-1945: il problema del collaborazionismo', Qualestoria (1998),

91-108.


they both claimed that they had agreed to collaborate in order to 'mitigate the rigour of the occupation and oppose Nazi policies',69 or to ease the grip of repression and

safeguard economic interests under threat from the Nazis. Such may indeed have been

the intentions of Trieste's prefect and podesta, but students of collaboration in the city

have pointed out that their strategy had little success and was certainly not the only motive for collaboration. What principally inspired the 'institutional collaborators' of

Trieste and its region was rather the desire

- presented

as an absolute imperative -

to

resist the communist-led Yugoslav liberation movement. Slav communist resistance

not only threatened a revolutionary overthrow of the socio-political order, it also

constituted a clear nationalist challenge: as far back as November 1943 the leader

of the movement had expressed an intention to incorporate the majority Slav areas,

and Venezia Giulia itself, into a resurgent Yugoslav state after the war.70 To defend

the region's Italian character and preserve its traditional politico-social orientation,

Coceani and Pagnini, with the approval of the great majority of Trieste's business

community, preferred to support the Germans, whom they saw as the only force

capable of combating the Slav and communist partisans. But this pretence that the

Italian authorities were defending national values, and their anti-Slav pact with the

Nazis, proved substantially counterproductive, giving the impression that the local

Italian population was radically, indeed violently, nationalistic and negating attempts

by the Italian resistance to forge a national identity based on the defence of the

political liberties destroyed by the 'border' Fascists.

Nationalism apart, some of Trieste's leading businessmen and financiers chose

collaboration in the hope of reaping huge short-term profits from Nazi orders and, in the longer term, of re-establishing themselves at the centre of Nazi-dominated

Europe, as German propaganda had promised they would do.

But it was when evoking defence against the partisan threat, and the region's

commercial ambitions, that Rainers legitimising strategy scored its greatest successes:

social demagogy and the will to power can be seen as the common denominators of Nazi

administrators, and this would ensure the collaboration of local groups (particularly ship-builders, insurance agents and forwarding agents) who were willing to adapt to the new conditions in the

hope of securing a leading position ?

and their own future ?

in the south-eastern corner of the

greater Reich. Of course there were serious conflicts of interest and of course the German take-over

was not a painless one ... but each and every potential conflict was suppressed by the determination

to avoid overt clashes and acknowledge the common interest of defence against the Slavs and

Communists. It is hard to imagine a more perfect fusion between class and national interests.71

69 B. Coceani, Trieste durante l'occupazione tedesca (Trieste, 1959), quoted in Ganapini, La Repubblica

d?lie camicie nere, 343. 70

See T. Sala, La crisifinale nel Litorale Adri?tico 1944-1943 (Udine: Del Bianco, 1962); M. Pacor, Confine orientale. Questione nazionale e resistenza nel Friuli Venezia Giulia (Milan, 1964); G. Fogar, Sotto l'occupazione nazista neue province orientali (Udine: Del Bianco, 1961).

71 Collotti, II litorale Adri?tico, 62-3.

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